Still Pools and Starlight
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: HPDM slash, DH SPOILERS. When centaurs kidnap a Hogwarts student, Auror Potter is tapped to find her. He understands that. What he doesn't understand is why he's being assigned astronomer Draco Malfoy, of all people, as a temporary partner. Threeshot.
1. The Kidnapping

**Title: **Still Pools and Starlight

**Disclaimer: **J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

**Rating: **R/M.

**Warnings: DH SPOILERS, ignores epilogue. **Language and sex.

**Pairings:**Harry/Draco (past Harry/others), Ron/Hermione.

**Summary: **When centaurs kidnap a Hogwarts student, Auror Potter is tapped to find her. He understands that. What he _doesn't_ understand is why he's been assigned astronomer Draco Malfoy, of all people, as a temporary partner.

**Word Count: **16,000.

**Author's Notes:**Written in partial fulfillment of silverariel's request for a one-shot, involving the following elements_: the "have to work together and develop a mutual respect and then fall in love" type of plot; Harry and/or Draco in an unusual job, something that isn't clichéd; one or both of them completely out of their usual element, which forces them to rely on each other when they usually wouldn't._

**Still Pools and Starlight**

"I want to know what you did to drive Fletcher away."

"Who says I did anything?" Harry lifted his gaze from the paperwork on his desk to smile innocently at Ron. "Except that lying bitch Fletcher, of course, which is just like her."

"Very funny, Harry. In that totally unfunny kind of way." Ron folded his arms and glared. Harry wondered idly if he was remembering the ending of their own ill-fated partnership, more than seven years ago now. "I want to know what you _did. _Experienced Aurors don't normally come back to the Department with tears pouring down their cheeks."

"Experienced Aurors also don't try to snog me in the middle of cases where we're working strictly on a professional footing."

At least that made Ron's mouth drop open a gratifying distance. Harry nodded solemnly and looked down to sign a copy of the report he'd already turned in to Beauchamp, the new Head Auror. This was the copy that would go into the Ministry Archives. Harry wondered what the Archivists did with all the old reports, files on dead criminals and closed cases, and other bits of paper that no one needed anymore. Probably used them to wipe their bums.

"She _didn't_," Ron breathed at last.

Harry leaned back and folded his arms behind his head. He and Ron were still good friends, despite the disaster their partnership had been. That wasn't Ron's fault, really. _No_ one partnered well with Harry, and that was exactly the way he liked it. Lonely, sometimes, but free. "Oh, yes, she did. We'd just about finished securing Mundungus's confession and the last of those diamonds he took, and I noticed she was blushing. I assumed it was because Mundungus is a distant relative of hers, and she was just embarrassed. But she disabused me of _that_ notion. She started to spout the usual nonsense. About how I was a hero, a _real _hero, unlike all the pretenders in the Ministry. Et bloody cetera. I tried to thank her politely and end it there—you know that's happened before, and most of the time it's nothing—"

Ron rolled his eyes expressively.

"But it went on further. She said that I was also a real gentleman—"

"Doesn't keep up with the reports in the _Daily Prophet_, does she?" Ron inquired in a stage whisper.

"—And she could count on me still respecting her after this, even if I didn't feel the same way. But I think she must have assumed I _did _feel the same way, from her reaction afterwards. She lunged at me and kissed me. I tried to push her off politely, but she had her mouth fastened on mine like some kind of bloody vampire. I had to hit her in the face to get her to back away. And then it was wails and complaints and accusations of leading her on." Harry gave a long, gusty sigh. "And a resignation as my partner when we got back to the Ministry, of course."

Ron narrowed his eyes. "That pious expression doesn't fool me. You're happy she's gone."

"Yes, I suppose I am. I just work better alone." Harry cocked his head at his best friend and sat up. "Now, I was informed that Beauchamp had a new case waiting for me. Best get to it."

Ron nodded. "And you'll come over to the house tonight? Hermione is disappointed you didn't show up the last _three _times you promised to come for dinner, you know."

Harry spread his hands. "I can't help it if I'm working all the time, and if I do the work so well that then they want to give me _more._It's a vicious cycle."

"You're a workaholic, Harry."

"And you've been watching Muggle telly again." Harry pointed a quill at Ron. "Reassure me that Hermione won't have Ginny or some 'perfect young witch' waiting there to ambush me, and I'll come."

Red ran like fire up the sides of Ron's face—not so different, Harry thought, from the look on Aurora Fletcher's face when she realized that he really wasn't going to fall down in the dust of Mundungus's hovel and beg her to marry him. "She did mention something about how Ginny recently broke up with Dean," he muttered.

Harry rolled his eyes. "I don't see why you keep trying to trap me into settling down. I'm twenty-nine. Hardly someone who requires a spouse just to mop up the drool from my chin and change my nappies."

"We want to see you _happy._ Isn't that what friends are for?"

Softening, Harry got up from the desk and slung an arm around Ron's shoulders. At times like this, he really _did _have to remember that it was his sarcastic tongue that had driven Ron away from their partnership in the first place, as well as the long and often spectacular arguments they'd had about Harry's habit of Body-Binding Ron to keep him out of danger and then leaping into said danger feet first. "Yeah, I'm sorry. But I am happy. Really."

"I wish it was the kind of happiness I had with Hermione," Ron said.

Harry chose to diplomatically ignore this remark, because remarking on the implausibility of that would just induce Ron to bring up his parents' marriage, and Bill and Fleur, and George and Angelina, for counterexamples, and they'd be here for an hour. "It's not that, but I think it's close," he said. "I enjoy working. And, to be honest, women don't do much for me. Never have."

Ron flushed. "Hermione thinks that you might, er, prefer blokes sometimes—"

Harry laughed in spite of himself. "I've tried it a time or two. But they don't do anything for me that witches don't. Most of them are just too in awe of who I am—that doesn't vary by sex, you know—and the rest—" He shrugged, unable to convey the extreme lack of excitement, passion, _danger_, he'd felt in all those situations. Ron would probably think he was mad. To him, love was something deep, peace-building, settled and calm. "I know some people have low sex drives. Maybe I'm one of them."

"I am _not_ discussing this with you," Ron said flatly. "I'll give Hermione your regrets for tonight, but we expect to see you soon. Maybe when you're finished with this latest case?"

Harry nodded, and watched his friend leave with a fond smile before he ambled towards the Head's office. He hoped that Beauchamp wouldn't insist he take a new partner before he tackled the next case. But then, Beauchamp was more intelligent than most candidates for the Head Auror position. He'd rather have results than perfect conformation to the rules of the Department, which meant Harry would have at least two or three cases of working by himself, in blissful freedom, before Beauchamp succumbed to pressure from above and tried to saddle him again.

_It makes more sense anyway, _Harry reasoned. _That way, the crazy tendency to risk my life that they all complain about can't put anyone _else _at risk._

And it made things more pleasant for _him_, tonight. Nothing to give a sense of danger like leaping alone into trouble with no backup.

Harry grinned and quickened his stride, wondering what he would be looking at—theft, or kidnapping, or murder. Maybe something like the tracking of the killer who called herself the Lynx, which had resulted in fifteen corpses, seven Auror teams trying to figure out who had done it, and a mad midnight dash that had resulted in an equally mad duel, when Harry guessed right about where she'd strike next.

He'd worked alone that time, too.

Deplore him as they liked, the other Aurors had to admit he got _results._

* * *

Draco spread the star-charts before him and stared at them for a long moment. Then he sighed and closed his eyes. Of course, the charts were still waiting for him when he looked again. 

That was one reason he had begun to study the stars. When the currents of magic and politics and personality veered too abruptly for him to keep up, he could always count on their steadiness and purity to rescue and reassure him.

And he had learned to accept the consequences of his decisions, too, at least more easily than he had at the end of the war. He had heard of the brewing trouble with the centaurs and taken the opportunity to leverage himself into it, so he could claim prestige if he succeeded, and more knowledge even if he didn't. The centaurs were the best astronomers in the magical world, more open and more sensitive to the heavenly influences than the most skilled wizard, and long-experienced in patterns that astronomers like Draco had yet to learn. Draco had been working patiently towards a rapport with them for years. They would be more likely to trust him now than an utterly uninvolved bystander, and he might be able to prevent a full-blown political crisis from breaking out between the Forbidden Forest herd and the Ministry of Magic.

On the other hand, there was always the chance that the centaurs really _had _done what rumors suggested they had done. The disappearance of Hogwarts's new Astronomy Professor, a centaur, from his position was certainly suspicious. In that case, Draco needed the protection of the Ministry's best Auror.

And that was Harry Potter.

_Damn it._

So Draco took up the star charts and Apparated directly from his drawing room to the long, skinny tower that capped his home. He could have walked the steps—normally he did, to put himself into a meditative mood—but it was already the afternoon of the day Potter was supposed to receive the case. Draco would meet him tomorrow. He had to know what to expect before then.

The tower seemed to sway beneath his boots as he landed. Draco took a deep breath, told himself that was an illusion, and then turned around and glanced up at the dome arching overhead. No matter the time of day, it was enchanted to show a dark night sky with the relevant constellations and planets.

Draco narrowed his eyes. He'd last been reading a star chart that used a birthday in late April—the chart of the kidnapped Hogwarts student. He needed to reset the thing.

"The thirty-first of July, 1980," he said aloud.

The constellations above him blurred and shifted as the stars obediently changed their positions, rippling to reflect the patterns that would have shone in the season and year of Potter's birth. Draco smiled in appreciation, drawing a breath of air as sweet as summer wind to him. He had spent nearly the entire small inheritance Lucius had "gifted" him with in order to create this spell, but the results were too often wonderful for him to regret it.

The stars settled. Draco drew out the charts and laid them carefully on the floor, glancing up now and then and moving them again, so that the enchanted light from above fell directly on the paper.

At last he felt the hum of magic catching, and moved out of the way. The charts and the stars together cast a series of complicated reflections in midair, near Draco's eye-height, a series of symbols and shapes and trajectories that he could read as a trained astronomer. Unlike the nonsense the Muggles called astrology, wizarding astronomy, as properly practiced, could not read the future. But it _could _reveal important things about a person's past and the contours of his personality in the present, which doubled as an extremely educated estimate. Draco hadn't had enough time to discover the precise hour of Potter's birth, to his regret; it would have made the reckoning even more accurate.

But he had this.

"Let's see how much you've changed since I last knew you, Potter," he murmured, and sank himself into the meditative trance that he'd once used when brewing potions, his mind speeding among the luminous arches and volleys of the man he'd be meeting tomorrow.

* * *

"This looks serious," said Harry with a frown as he accepted the folder from Beauchamp. His giddiness in the corridors had faded away, as it usually did when he came face-to-face with reminders of the victims. He flicked open the folder and mentally flinched as he saw a wizarding photograph of a young girl with knobby wrists sticking out from the sleeves of an oversized Hogwarts robe. She had red hair and brown eyes, reminding him sharply of Ginny at eleven. A smiling man and woman leaned in from behind and hugged her, then waved madly to the camera. 

"It is," said Beauchamp. He was a large man who always looked as if he should have become a Quidditch Beater instead of Head Auror. He spoke as Harry continued looking through the file, though he must have known his best Auror would locate the information almost as soon as he spoke it. "Her name's Lydia Siddons. First-year, Hufflepuff, halfblood. She's gone missing inside the Forbidden Forest." He paused impressively, just long enough that Harry reluctantly looked at him instead of the words on the parchment. "And the Astronomy Professor vanished at the same time."

Harry frowned, some memory of Hermione exultantly waving the _Daily Prophet_ coming to him. "Hang on. Isn't the Astronomy Professor a centaur?"

That was it, he remembered, even before Beauchamp nodded. That was what Hermione had been so excited about. The Hogwarts Board of Governors and the parents had finally been forced to accept a magical creature teacher as a full professor.

"Yes. Name of Magus." The Head Auror leaned forwards. "Since he left no explanation, there's speculation that he kidnapped her. He may simply have gone in pursuit, but…" He left the words dangling.

Harry nodded grimly. He didn't need Beauchamp to tell him how precarious the situation between wizards and centaurs was at the moment (which was undoubtedly why Beauchamp wasn't telling him). Part of Kingsley Shacklebolt's mandate to clean up the Ministry involved treating magical creatures more equally where possible. He hadn't managed to convince anyone to free house-elves or to give goblins wands yet, but he _had_ successfully reached out to centaurs. They were the test case, with thousands of eyes on their behavior at all times. If Lydia Siddons wasn't recovered unharmed, or even if she was and it turned out that Professor Magus had kidnapped her, then the delicate politics surrounding the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures would go south fast.

"It's imperative that we get her back as soon as possible," Beauchamp continued. "Her parents are firm on the subject of Lydia not being a child to run away on her own. She's always been timid and rather frightened of both regular animals _and _magical creatures, in fact. Interviews with the professors at Hogwarts confirm that. She could barely enter Professor Magus's classroom at first, she was so petrified. It's extremely unlikely that she's just gone exploring or even that she could have been lured or tempted into the Forest."

"No other child is missing?" Harry asked. He well remembered how some of his friends—and some of his enemies—had tempted him into risks he wouldn't have taken otherwise. He really had to thank them, since otherwise he would never have discovered his own taste for danger. But for someone as young as Lydia, probably desperate to fit in, friends might have pulled her into a dangerous situation not of her own choosing.

Beauchamp shook his head. "No. You'll need to get started on this tomorrow morning at the latest, Potter. If we can show the _good_ people of Great Britain—" only that slight inflection hinted at Beauchamp's bitterness over his failed political career, and only someone used to him could have told it was there "—that we have our best Auror on the case, then they're more likely to relax, not panic, and let us do what we need to." He leaned forwards over the desk, even though, Harry thought with irritation, he didn't have to emphasize how serious the case was that way. "But the more time you take to find the girl, Potter, the less control we have over the public reaction. Go in and come out again as quickly as you can. Preferably _with_ Lydia."

Harry waited a moment, but there was no mention of a partner. He couldn't contain his smile as he nodded. "Understood, sir." This was exactly the kind of case he liked: dangers of more than one kind, wild territory, and the chance to rescue or save someone else who really needed his help.

He'd just started to turn away when Beauchamp cleared his throat ostentatiously. Harry narrowed his eyes at the wall, but made sure his expression was pleasant, calm, and unremarkable when he glanced over his shoulder.

"Yes, sir?"

"You'll be working with a partner on this one," Beauchamp began. He held up a warning hand when Harry's face contorted into a snarl. "Absolutely nothing I can do about it, Potter. The public _needs _to be reassured we're doing all we can, and this person has gained some notoriety as someone who understands centaurs. As well as they can be understood," Beauchamp added, with a little snort. He had never had much faith in the project to reach out to the centaurs at all, Harry knew.

Harry relaxed a little. At least this partner wasn't another Auror. That was something. "Who is he?"

"A respected astronomer." Beauchamp let his eyelids fall slightly, giving him the look of a sleepy cat. "Draco Malfoy."

* * *

Draco felt his eyebrows climbing higher and higher as he consulted the series of slowly turning shapes in front of him. 

My, my. Potter had changed superficially over the years, but in the most important ways, he hadn't changed at all. He had simply grown deeper and deeper in his more Gryffindor traits.

Draco sucked thoughtfully on his tongue. Would this be a successful partnership after all?

But it _had _to be. Draco had never come near the deeper secrets of the centaurs because, while he had diplomacy, tact, and an interest in the stars, he didn't have other skills that they demanded for their trust: courage, undivided strength of heart, a willingness to trust in return. From the shimmer of his birth stars, Potter had all of those, and they had _increased_ since he was in school. The Ministry's best Auror was also the one uniquely situated to a scenario like this, though Draco imagined the Ministry had sent him for rather different reasons than Draco wanted him along.

The most worrying thing was a long, thin, shimmering snake of light, rather like a bad representation of the Milky Way, that ran from behind a triangle signaling Potter had learned how to hold his tongue in some situations. Draco studied it, narrowing his eyes. It seemed to travel straight through his mind without triggering recognition, which signaled a gap in his knowledge.

Except there _were_ no gaps in his knowledge, at least not of human astronomy.

At last, by revolving shapes in his mind and visualizing different compositions of the ones he already knew, he realized what it was. He had indeed seen this trait before, but in those cases, it was only a small strand. This was an extended passion for danger, a love of risk—close to a death wish, though given Potter's luck and love of idealism above his own life, Draco supposed _he _thought of it simply as a willingness to dare what others were too much cowards to attempt.

Draco frowned and tapped his index finger against his mouth. He needed Potter firmly behind him when they met the centaurs, not contemplating what foolish heroics he would perform to rescue the girl. What could cause that?

A smile spread across his lips as he realized that Potter, being bull-headed, would lower his head and charge at the _first _target in front of him, and be reluctant to abandon that one for another, no matter how tempting. What Draco needed to do was _give _him a challenge, one that would catch his attention immediately.

_And I think I can do that quite happily._

* * *

Harry waited for the git in his own office, which, for a reason he would _never _know, Beauchamp had insisted was the proper place for such an unpleasant duty. Harry had already considered and rejected half-a-dozen pleas for clemency, for the ability to work free and Malfoy-less. Beauchamp had used the most effective of his many argumentative techniques on Harry yesterday: he had shut his mouth and glared at him. Nothing Harry said moved him. Now and then he would point at the picture of Lydia Siddons, as though reminding Harry she came closer to death each moment he spent complaining instead of acquainting himself with the facts of the case. 

So Harry awaited the bastard.

He had also rejected half-a-dozen plans to trap the chair in which the prat would sit with jokes from Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes. That would make the inevitable rupture between them his fault, and Harry would not have it said that_ he_ had let petty personal animosity get in the way when there was a little girl's life at stake.

But of all people—_Malfoy._ And an _astronomer. _Harry supposed he hadn't had much choice; he had heard that the Wizengamot had prohibited all members of the Malfoy family from using many spells after the war, mitigating circumstances on account of age or not.

Harry had met astronomers before, though, both as victims and as suspects. They were always people who conceived of themselves as lofty, impersonal, inhuman intellects, capable of peering into Harry's mind and reading his thoughts better than any Legilimens. Harry was of the opinion that a collective punch on the nose would improve the lot of them.

And they were _refined_, too. Their offices, or observatories, or star-gazing towers, were always organized with a cleanliness that bordered on psychopathic. Harry considered a bit of healthy clutter the sign of a mind that could breathe freely. And it would be worse in a forest, where Malfoy would probably whinge every time his precious robe scraped over a twig.

The door opened. Harry didn't bother to change the attitude he was lounging in—boots on the desk, hands folded behind his neck—but simply turned his head.

Malfoy stood in the door like an alabaster statue, looking at Harry. His face had no expression, though Harry would have expected at least a sneer. Sure enough, he wore dark purple robes with silver trimming and runes scrolled up and down the sides that were no doubt symbolic of something. He had his hands folded in the sleeves. He made no movement and offered no sound. Harry crushed the impulse to crumple a piece of parchment and throw it at his face, as a test of whether he would blink.

"Malfoy," he said briefly.

"Careful to guard your tongue, Potter?" One of Malfoy's eyebrows rose—just one. And, sure enough, his voice was that mincing little _astronomer's_voice, pecking and picking its way along as if the air of Harry's office weren't good enough for it. "That's not the report I heard. Haven't you lost partners because you couldn't stop talking? Haven't you worried innocent men and women into tears when you treated them as Dark witches and wizards for not telling you the truth immediately?"

"That happened_once_!" Harry barked, sitting upright. "Just _once—_"

He caught his breath, astonished at himself. Since when did he let Malfoy creep under his skin without at least a token attempt to ignore him? And they were supposed to be adults now.

"Luckily for you, we don't have to talk much," he retorted instead, standing. "You should have all the information you need in that." He nodded to the thick file hovering behind Malfoy. Bastard was too good to carry his own parchment instead of using magic, of course.

"Luckily for _me_?"

Harry threw him a look of utter loathing. Malfoy glanced away and, just audibly, withdrew his hands from his sleeves to cast a cleaning spell on his robe. Harry's teeth clicked with the effort of not saying something.

"I'm impressed you waited for me," Malfoy commented in a flat drawl that sounded a little more like the voice of the snide schoolboy Harry remembered. "Would have thought you'd be out there already, letting Gryffindor stup—excuse me, _instincts_, guide you in the_ hunt._"

Harry sucked in so much breath his chest hurt. He stalked forwards until he was a few inches away from Malfoy. He trembled with the force of his—of his focus, really. He had encountered people he loathed more than Malfoy, such as every murderer who had ever walked the earth, every parent who had ever abused a child, and Voldemort. Malfoy was far down the list of his enemies.

But he had never encountered anyone else who could cause him to lose the wider spread of his attention and narrow his vision to pinpoint just one thing. All that mattered right now was making Malfoy understand and prevent him from sabotaging the mission. A centaur could have trotted into the office just then, and Harry would still have put him off in lieu of making Malfoy know this first.

"We have a little girl to save," he whispered, his breath coming out in hot gusts across Malfoy's face that were meant to intimidate. "If you prevent me from doing it, or hinder me in just _one_ way, I will trim your tongue from your mouth."

* * *

Draco was stunned by how much he was _enjoying_ this. 

It was easy to insult Potter. It had _always _been easy to insult Potter. But he had expected the pleasure to dim a bit in the years since they had seen each other. He needed Potter to cooperate with him, after all, and was only doing this to distract him from charging into the Forbidden Forest like a suicidal fool. This was a positive _duty_ to further his knowledge. So, like all things not directly involving the study of astronomy in the last few years, Draco had expected to find it tedious.

Instead, he was near to panting with the pleasure. Potter glittering with danger and the promise of vengeance was a wondrous thing. It was all Draco could do to keep from reaching out and slapping Potter, or clenching a hand in his hair and tugging his face near, just to see what would happen.

_Hold back, _he counseled himself, advice he hadn't needed in eleven years. _You'll stand a better chance with him if you make yourself intriguing later as well as now._

Later? Now? Draco gave his head a minute shake, as his mind wavered back from the sudden point of certainty into his more usual doubts and half-judgments. He needed Potter for the venture into the Forbidden Forest. Certainly_ not _for anything else. If he was thinking of an enduring friendship, then he was _not_ thinking.

Potter seemed to have taken his headshake for an answer to his demand. His eyes narrowed, and he leaned close enough that Draco could actually smell his breath now, instead of just feeling it. Mints; he must have used a spell. No one's breath smelled like that naturally. "You'll oppose me, then?"

"In personal matters? Always." Draco summoned up a languid smile. He had no trouble in calling it, only in keeping it from sharpening with appreciation as he eyed the messy tangle of Potter's hair and the flash of his eyes. "In this? No. I wish her rescued. If the centaurs are accused of killing her, or even of letting her come to harm, it does irreparable damage to my relationship with them."

Potter rolled his eyes and moved backwards. "_Your _relationship with them. Of course. I reckon it's too much to expect, that you'd care about her safety because she's human, or even about the wider political cause of the centaurs."

"I care about politics in more ways than you can understand," Draco said calmly. "Mine are the politics of the mind. If the centaurs share their knowledge of astronomy with us, you have no idea what spells we could develop, what advances in magic might occur. The last full sharing of magic across species occurred when Hogwarts was founded, do you realize that? Slytherin—"

"I have no interest in hearing you vindicate your House." Potter flung him a sideways look and raised a lip, just enough to expose one of his eyeteeth. "As if you could, in any case."

Draco accepted that jibe with a bow. "I believe you were the one who said we had a little girl to save?"

The green eyes on him were so brilliant with fury that Draco was tempted to purr. Instead, Potter jerked a nod at him and then flung open the door. "After you," he murmured, with a courtesy Draco didn't believe in for a moment.

On the other hand, it would have been stupid to refuse. Draco swept ahead of Potter, turning the implied mockery into an honor.

The Goosing Charm caught him on the arse, so neatly that Draco felt a certain sullen admiration even as he jumped. He turned back to find Potter sliding his wand into his sleeve, with an expression of innocence no better than the courtesy had been.

"Entertaining as it is to watch you find invisible fleas in the Ministry, Malfoy, don't you think we should get going?"


	2. The Captivity

Harry took a deep breath the moment he stepped out of the Apparition. Even though they were still some distance beyond the gates of Hogwarts, thanks to the spells that prevented Apparition inside the school, he thought he could taste a distinct difference in the air. It smelled like sweat here, spent effort and strength and rich soil and butterbeer and_ home._

Malfoy pushed past him, his nose in the air, a bored expression on his face, as though he held nothing sacred, not even the years he'd spent inside the school, which were probably _still _the best ones of his life. Harry scowled and gave chase. Malfoy moved unexpectedly fast for an astronomer, though. Harry had to admit, grudgingly, that perhaps he wouldn't have to worry about the prat fussing over his robes after all.

Of course, Harry would rather that the question never arose. But he couldn't just Body-Bind Malfoy and leave him in a secluded place, the way he'd done to Ron and numerous other Aurors. This case was _political._And maybe Malfoy did have some extra standing in the eyes of the centaurs that would mean the difference between negotiating with them and fighting with them.

_Persuasion it is, then._

"You know, Malfoy," he called after the rapidly striding bloke in front of him, "you don't _have_ to do this."

Harry had to stop quickly when Malfoy halted on his heels and spun around. The man glared at him, a tint of color to that alabaster face now. Harry found himself on the verge of a stupidly giddy grin at the reaction. He suppressed it.

But, damn it, Malfoy got his blood moving in more ways than one. It was good to see that his own teasing and pushing and pressure had some kind of effect.

"What do you mean, Potter?" Malfoy enunciated carefully. "You were the one who told me—who _took care_ to tell me—that we had a little girl to save, and that you would tolerate no interference in that mission. Isn't this interference? What will you do to punish yourself?"

Harry shrugged. "Nothing. My boss takes care of that well enough." He grinned at the slight, intrigued lift of Malfoy's eyebrow, which Malfoy didn't manage to hold back in time. "And I'm telling you that there's a way for you to help but not enter the Forest. You'll still get full credit for having done your part, I promise."

Those unusually gray eyes gave a blink. Harry found himself edging closer, wanting to make sure of the emotions and the light in them. He experienced a brief moment of startlement, then shrugged. _I was standing too far away,_he justified himself.

"Why would you—" Malfoy shook his head, seeming to have decided that his tone was too soft, and adopted a harsher one. "Why would you assume I'd come all the way to Hogwarts only to refrain from entering the Forest? Gathering knowledge is part of my _purpose_ here, Potter. And to do that, I have to talk to the centaurs."

"I'll let you put recording spells on me, so that I can carry back their words to you," Harry promised, breathing more easily as he realized Malfoy had a modicum of reason. He'd worked with people who didn't. Body-Binds were the only recourse there. "You can transfer your knowledge to me via a Pensieve—"

"You have a Pensieve?"

"Of course." Harry pulled it, shrunken, from his robe pocket to prove this. "As I said, you can transfer your knowledge to me that way, and I'll know the right questions to ask. In the meantime, you get all the leisure and none of the work." He glanced at the purple-and-silver robes. "And you don't need to damage your clothes, either." He smiled at Malfoy. "What do you say?"

Malfoy was at least considering the offer. He stood with his arms folded, his head tipped forwards. Harry held his breath and hoped.

* * *

Draco was thinking that he had underestimated the thread of suicidal recklessness in Potter. The love of danger was there, all right, but so was, apparently, an intense distaste for working with anyone else. Draco had assumed Potter would be the one to urge cooperation on _him,_believing in noble Gryffindor virtues as he did. He'd been hoodwinked by his own expectations. 

_Well. No more. _

He lifted his head. Potter's eyes fired with expectation. Draco felt another powerful stirring of interest. He had never met someone so vividly _alive._

Well, correction—nothing human. Some of the more intelligent fairies had Potter's restlessness, but worse brains even than he did. And unicorns were filled with the same half-nervous energy, but even unicorns relaxed sometimes. Potter never did. Trying to stand still and not jig up and down like a small child needing to use the loo, he still radiated more engagement with life than any seven of Draco's colleagues.

Of course, the answer to his query was always going to be the same. Draco wanted the knowledge the centaurs possessed, and he didn't trust Potter to represent it to him correctly with all the Pensieve memories and recording spells in the world. Pensieve memories couldn't tell you the correct questions to ask.

Now there was an extra reason to go along, though. Draco wanted to see that energy at close quarters, touch it and behold it, for the same reason that he yearned to run his hand down a unicorn's silken mane.

"No," he said.

Potter reeled back a pace, the disappointment on his face so acute Draco's breathing quickened. Potter shook his head and snapped to the attack a moment later, though. "Why _not_? You must see that there are all sorts of advantages to it, especially for you. We both get what we want this way, and we're not forced to work together."

"Not true," Draco said. "I wouldn't understand the centaur assumptions about astronomy, the patterns they see, any better than I do now. No, Potter," he said, to check the interruption he _knew _was coming, "I really wouldn't. And I'm less anxious to avoid work than you give me credit for."

He moved a step closer and dropped his voice. Potter naturally leaned in to hear him; Draco's throat tightened with satisfaction. "Besides," he whispered harshly, "you have not the slightest idea of how to survive in centaur territory, what the regulations and rules and laws are. I'm not all that sure of them myself, and I've been in regular contact with centaurs for five years. You'd die."

Potter rolled his eyes.

"You don't care about that?" It was time to find out just how far Potter's blithe disregard for his own life ran. Draco found it fascinating, but that didn't mean he'd let it endanger _him._

Potter shrugged, open-handed. "Everyone's got to die sometime, right?" he said, speaking as if he'd memorized a speech on the matter. "I've survived so far. I can survive this, I'm fairly certain. And at least, if I don't, I'll die _free._" The depth of passion behind that word told Draco what part of the problem was: Potter had decided partners were a burden he didn't want to bear. "I'm the only one who's affected. No one else is put in danger."

"Except Lydia Siddons, in this case," Draco said.

Potter blinked. "I—" He stared at the ground, then sighed. "I hate kidnappings," he commented, randomly.

"Because you have to work on them with partners?"

Potter scowled up at him from beneath tightened eyebrows. "Yeah."

Draco smiled, because it was impossible not to. "I'm not best pleased to be away from my tower so long either, Potter, nor walking among people who might have killed an innocent student and won't hesitate to attack an adult wizard." He couldn't say that he resented accompanying Potter with any degree of truth, anymore. "But we do need to work on this together. Get yourself resigned to a partner on this occasion. Trust me," he added, and flavored his voice with suggestion because the impulse was too strong to resist. "I can be _very_ good company."

He turned to make his way towards the Forest instead of watching Potter's pupils dilate or his face turn red. Fun as this was, they had knowledge to gather, and a girl to save, if she was still alive.

* * *

Harry shook his head several times as they worked their way further and further into the Forbidden Forest, though he knew he should be paying more attention to the shadows under trees or the odd way that the leaves moved on the branches, not always with the wind. He couldn't deny the possibility chasing itself through his mind, however. Each time he tried, it rose like a revenant. 

_With Draco Malfoy? Really? Are you mad?_

Well, according to the majority of his colleagues, there was no doubt of _that._

Harry's gaze went back to Malfoy's figure forging gracefully ahead of him, displaying a remarkable indifference as to whether his robes were tattered or not. Presumably he had others. His hair seemed to have lightened with his sun-avoiding skin, to the point that it sent out starry gleams into the darkness of the Forest. His hands, which appeared beyond his sleeves to push back the branches and pick leaves out of his hair, were slender, but not weak, Harry thought. This was a different kind of strength, one Harry hadn't seen in the Aurors or Quidditch players or random shop-clerks he'd tried to date. The lithe, continually twisting strength of a…

Harry smirked to himself. _A weasel. Or a ferret._

But _still_. Malfoy was physically intoxicating. And since Harry had never felt that way about anyone for more than a few brief moments at a time, while this had endured for about ten minutes now, he knew there was something wrong—with him, assuredly—and this could be dangerous.

He shook his head and wrenched his mind back to the job with a _snap._ Malfoy hadn't lied when he said it might kill Harry.

At that thought, warmth flooded through his veins. He knew Ron and Hermione thought he was mad, yes, and so did the majority of the people who'd worked with him. Beauchamp thought the same, but put up with Harry acting like a bull in a china shop for the sake of its getting results.

But Harry thought he valued his life more than they did. How could anyone say he really valued his life unless he knew what it was like to be in danger of losing it?

Malfoy halted abruptly and lifted one hand. Harry was lost in admiration of the color of his skin against the red and gold leaves for a moment, even as his body responded to the command and froze without thought.

_You, _he told himself, when he'd caught his breath again, _have a serious problem._

He cast a spell that should allow his voice to travel to Malfoy's ears without any telltale hiss of whispering. "Centaurs?" he asked.

Malfoy's head jerked a little in surprise, but he didn't let it overset him or make any extra noise. Harry's warmth towards the other man increased, and he promptly rolled his eyes. _I think I was happier when I didn't have a sex drive._

"An outrunner," Malfoy breathed back. "They usually have at least nine sentries around their camps."

Harry frowned. Malfoy's voice had dropped into an odd emphasis on "nine" that he probably wasn't even aware of. "For the nine planets?"

Again the jerk of the head, but this time Malfoy turned enough to let Harry see the widening of his eyes. "_Very_ good," he said.

Harry quashed the impulse to preen. They were here on a _job._ He nodded imperceptibly, as much to say that, yes, he _was _very good, and Malfoy had just better get used to it. "What angles are they arranged at? Can you tell if this is the first we've encountered, or if we might have passed others without noticing?"

Malfoy frowned. "This is the outermost, I'm sure—the one representing Mercury. He's staring straight at us."

Harry felt a stab of disappointment, but reminded himself there really _was _no way to walk silently in an autumn forest. A wizard could control his own noises, but not the noises of the birds who saw him coming, or the danger that a ripple of silence in the forest would signal to other creatures. Besides, this had never been about sneaking into the centaur camp, or home, or meadow, or whatever it was they had, and stealing Lydia back. They needed to negotiate. That was why Malfoy was along.

Harry was of the opinion that negotiations would fail and Harry himself would have to go in and rescue Lydia, because that was what always happened. But he would at least let Malfoy try.

"Do you know the ritual greeting?" he asked.

"Of course," Malfoy said, and moved forwards. Harry followed, unable to restrain a grin. If his other partners had just been _competent_, he might have been able to work with them, too.

* * *

Draco was startlingly aware of Potter at his back, in a way he hadn't ever been aware of anything except the stars. Or, no, wait, that wasn't true, was it? He'd always been aware of Potter like that during Quidditch games, and when the Gryffindor was angry and snarling at him across the Great Hall. 

The wine of near-arousal coiling throughout his body heightened his senses, and he saw the centaur sentry before he fired a warning arrow. That was very, very unusual. Draco didn't let Potter know how unusual. The outermost sentries were usually bays or sorrels, which stood a better chance of blending with the colors of the forest, and they were skilled in choosing the best positions to stay unseen.

"The stars shine even in the midst of the day," he called.

The sentry considered them for long moments. Draco didn't stop moving towards him. If he hadn't fired yet, he wasn't going to.

Of course, they might still get an arrow from the Venus sentry, or the Earth one. Centaurs were bastards like that.

"And the sun shines on the other side of the world during the night," said the sentry at last. He was a handsome bay, with a long black tail that Draco would have welcomed hairs from if he still regularly brewed potions. His chest was massive, as with all centaurs, and bronzed from long hours in the sun. His hands kept his longbow bent and nocked without effort. As he watched them, a black forehoof scraped thoughtfully across the ground.

Draco felt Potter tense, ready to attack. Luckily, though, he didn't. This was the first stage of many delicate ones, and Draco needed the sentry's full trust and cooperation. Otherwise, they were unlikely ever to see another centaur beyond this one, much less rescue the Siddons girl or gain the knowledge Draco was after.

"What is time to one who knows the heavens?" he murmured, leaning an elbow on the tree nearest him and offering the sentry a smile.

The heavy human head turned, while the centaur's ears twitched like a horse's under his thick dark hair. He must have been startled at Draco's knowledge of the second level of greetings, which most wizards never reached. "Time may still be much," he answered. Then he swept into an elaborate bow, one foreleg bending beneath him like a parade mount, his head touching the ground briefly. "My name is Orian."

Draco narrowed his eyes. Good a sign as the name-gifting was at this point, the bow was not. It usually signified mockery, since centaurs rarely bowed to any but their own leaders. "My name is Draco Malfoy," he said. "I am, like you, a lover of the stars and a seeker of their truth."

Orian took a step forwards. Draco wouldn't have thought it possible that Potter could become tenser, but he could feel it happening behind him.

"But it is not truth that you have come here seeking," Orian said, his voice descending into an ominous rumble. "And you have not introduced your companion to me. Why is he marked with lightning on his brow?"

Draco felt free to turn his head and look at Potter then. Potter stood in a poised stillness, his attention so perfectly focused on Orian Draco felt a bit left out. His eyes had banked some of their fire, but weren't the less deadly for that. Draco's legs trembled under a wash of desire.

"His name is Harry Potter," he replied. "Forgive me. I did not conceive that he needed an introduction."

Potter's head twitched towards him, but only a short distance, despite the incredulity he must have felt at Draco's pronouncement. He still stood ready to repel an attack from the centaur. Draco let a smile reign in his mind, since it couldn't touch his face. _Good, Potter. Very good._

Orian had drawn himself up with the name, so that he was almost sitting on his haunches. His eyes, a stunning blue, narrowed, and then he snorted. "Much is now explained," he said. "The coming together of the stars and the lightning…we did not know." A hint of excitement threaded through his bugle-like tone as he lowered the arrow from the string of his longbow at last. Draco breathed a little more easily. Hopefully, Potter wouldn't notice. "Come."

And he whirled and trotted away into the forest, the fallen leaves crackling beneath his hooves like fire, apparently in perfect confidence that they would follow; he never once looked back.

"What was that all about?" Potter whispered, voice soft and shallow. "The coming together of the stars and the lightning?"

"I don't know," Draco replied. His skin was on fire, and he had to swallow several times before he could breathe normally. "Nothing bad, or he would have killed us where we stood." _Something I don't know!_ This was the closest he had ever been to the deeper centaur secrets.

"That's comforting," Potter muttered.

Draco turned to scowl back at him. Potter had somehow contrived to fold his arms and lounge against a tree in the meantime. His eyes raked over Draco's body as though estimating his strength for a coming contest and finding him wanting, and then traveled up to his face and locked with Draco's gaze.

The force of their meeting eyes was almost audible. Draco's chest went tight. He felt energy assaulting him from all sides, striking from the air like miniature arrows and crackling up through the soles of his boots.

"We have to follow Orian right now," he whispered. "But don't _think_ this is finished, Potter. We have things to discuss when we leave the forest."

For just a moment, blank surprise destroyed the challenging look on Potter's features. But then glory was in his eyes, and he gave Draco a smile of surprising sweetness. "You're on."

Draco smiled back, drinking in the way Potter's eyes shone and his hair lay—or didn't lie—on his head, and then turned to follow the centaur.

* * *

Harry had never thought in detail about what the centaurs did in the middle of the Forbidden Forest. If asked, he would have said, "Er. Gallop about? Look at the stars? Brood on the wrongs wizards have done them? Shoot intruders?" 

He wasn't the world's most eloquent speaker.

But he doubted that descriptions would have helped him understand. He could barely understand what his eyes were telling him as Orian led them past a guardian ring of trees and into the middle of a vast clearing.

Wizards would have used the space to rear a tower. Muggles, from what Harry understood of their building practices, would have cut down the trees first, smoothed the slight hillocks from the ground, and turned the entire thing into a scraped place of cement and steel.

The centaurs _curved._

Half-circles of strangely flattened oak and birch, beech and pine, extended around parts of the clearing's edges, always positioned so that they left as much open space as possible and even seemed to enhance what was already there. When Harry peered closely at the wooden "walls," he realized that they were still living trees, with roots sunk deep in the earth and ragged remnants of leaves fluttering along the edges.

From the tops of the walls and into the air extended long, twisting ramps that turned back on themselves like the figures in a dizzying Muggle painting Hermione and Ron had in their drawing room; Harry's eyes always crossed trying to look at it. Some of the ramps were wood, some stone, but none were supported by anything. On them, centaurs walked calmly along, or galloped—but sideways and upside-down as often as upright. Harry watched a chestnut centaur with strong features rush along a "normal" section of the pathway, then turn perpendicular to the ground and go on trotting as before. He shook his head, dizzy.

The centerpiece, or centerpieces, of the ramps were a series of large wooden balls with doors in their sides, dodging and looping and floating around the ramps. Harry could make out two very small ones, which looked barely large enough for a single centaur to pass inside without ducking; three that seemed of medium size; and four mighty ones that cast shadows over the clearing as they zoomed past. The number alone would have told him the truth, but there were gleaming parti-colored rings around one of the large ones, just for confirmation. The centaurs had constructed models of the planets and lived inside them.

"What keeps them up?" he asked, barely able to force the question past numb lips.

A laugh startled him. He looked at Malfoy to find him with his head tossed back, his eyes fastened hungrily on the revolving wooden models.

Harry stared, captivated again. Malfoy with amusement on his features had been no great sight in school; the sneer of sardonic laughter was not much different from the sneer of vindictiveness. But this was a genuine half-smile, and the glow in his eyes spoke more of wonder and delight than spite at someone else's expense. And then Malfoy turned that smile on _him_, and Harry would have stumbled if he hadn't been a trained Auror with both feet planted quite sturdily.

"It's centaur magic," Malfoy whispered intensely. "A feat no wizard could duplicate. We can't make trees grow like that. Not even Herbologists can, because we manipulate them too much." He nodded at the rounded, rooted trees. "The centaurs _persuade._ It's clear to me now. And as for how the ramps and the planets are kept aloft…" He looked up longingly. "That, I still have to learn."

Harry spent a moment debating how he could get that attention focused back on him, and then he snapped to alert as a centaur paced towards them. He kept his wand in his sleeve, however, and a moment later was glad that he had, as eight centaurs stepped forwards to flank the central figure, all holding longbows or jagged knives.

Harry studied the centaur in the middle. Black hide, for the most part, but vivid red stripes ran down his flanks from the spine, following the curves of the muscles. Harry wondered if that was natural, or perhaps the result of an injury.

_Or a wizard's spell, aimed to stop a charging centaur._

He was taller than the others, his eyes severely gray, his hair brown and shaggy. He halted so close to Harry that all Harry's instincts stood up and screamed at once, begging for him to draw his wand. Harry ignored those instincts, and instead held still as a hand reached out and pushed his fringe back from his forehead, revealing the lightning bolt scar.

"Yes," the centaur said, in a voice deep enough Harry could feel it in his bones. "The lightning." He wheeled lightly on his back hooves—so lightly Harry shuddered, imagining the speed he could probably build up in a run—and faced Malfoy, studying the symbols on his robes. "And the stars."

Malfoy gave an imperceptible nod. "The girl?" he asked, voice so polite Harry thought absurdly they were at a society tea for a moment, never mind the trees and the hovering wooden ramps and the goddamn _centaurs._

"Safe." The centaur tossed his head as he spoke, and Harry wondered what that meant. Was he lying? At any rate, Harry wasn't inclined to believe any word about Lydia until he saw her safe with his own eyes.

Malfoy seemed inclined to, though. "Very well," he said. "What matters the coming of the stars and the lightning? You took Lydia to make us arrive, and arrive together, I suppose."

_How can he know that? _Harry tried to scowl over the centaur's shoulder, to indicate that Malfoy should be sharing any sources of mysterious knowledge with _Harry_, but Malfoy ignored him serenely, looking the black centaur in the eye all the while. It surprised Harry how much he hated being ignored.

He was just about to make some remark that might be unfortunate but at least would cause Malfoy to _look _at him when the black centaur said, "Yes. My name is Magus, and I have been Hogwarts's Astronomy Professor. Whether I return to my post, and what happens to you, and what knowledge you leave here with, will depend on what you do next. The eternal stars hold all wisdom, but humans do not know them as well as we do, and are often poised to resist their courses."

"What must we do next?" Malfoy had become a statue again. Harry wasn't sure whether he liked the look of him that way, too, or whether he wanted to smash the mask to pieces and take Malfoy in his mouth and—

_Whoa._ Harry blinked such thoughts away. He would have shaken himself violently, but he didn't think sudden movement was a good idea right now. Where had _that_ come from? Attraction was one thing, but he should have been thinking of kissing, at the most, not sex.

Had he been _that_hard up?

"Give us your wands," Magus said.

Harry bared his teeth. At once eight longbows were trained on him. Harry kept still, but noted that baring teeth was apparently a predator signal to centaurs.

"No fucking way," he settled for saying instead.

"Why should we?" Malfoy still stood with his hands folded in his sleeves and his voice perfectly calm, damn him. "What have the eternal stars decreed for us, that we should endure tests?"

"Three," Magus said, his hoof scraping in the dirt with a slow, hypnotic pattern. He had leaned forwards to study Malfoy's face now. Harry wondered irritably what he was looking for. Perhaps centaurs became dazzled from staring at the stars for so long and Magus was just looking for a complementary glaze in Malfoy's eyes. "One is a test that you will undergo together, a trial of trust in us. The second is for the lightning bolt, a test of courage. The third is for the starlight, a test of moderation."

Harry could feel himself relaxing, a little. He supposed that wasn't so unreasonable to demand. The centaurs had shown trust in the wizards by inviting him and Malfoy into their sanctuary, and now they wanted trust in return. And of course courage was something _he _should have no trouble enduring, and Malfoy looked as though he could teach a glacier lessons in moderation.

If only they didn't have to surrender their _wands._

He glanced at Malfoy, only to find that the other man had apparently been waiting for the eye contact. And once again, as with the moment before they followed Orian, the air stretched tense between them. Malfoy cocked his head and touched his tongue lightly to his lips.

"Trust me, Potter," he whispered.

Harry shivered. Tremors coursed through him, tremors of worry and caution and excitement so strong he thought he might throw up. This would have been enough of a risk alone, but with the need to rely on a known (past) enemy and without his wand to defend himself—

The risk was so seductive Harry knew he couldn't say no to it.

"Yes," he said, so softly he saw Magus turning his head to listen. "I will." He drew his wand out of his sleeve, ignoring the creaking of the longbows that resulted, and tossed it into the dust at Magus's hooves. Malfoy's followed a moment later.

Magus nodded, and came as close as Harry had ever seen a centaur come to smiling. He scooped up the wands in one smooth movement. Harry couldn't keep his gaze from following them, but they were hidden from sight in a braided leather belt hanging on the centaur's waist.

"Bring them," Magus commanded.

Half his guard came forwards to lead Harry and Draco away. Harry swayed, caught between striking out and surrendering, and only gave in to surrender by the nearest of margins. If _this _was dangerous, trying to fight without a wand after he had given his word not to was even more so.

But though death sang like a siren, he _did _want to see what would happen. So he went limp and allowed himself to be dragged.


	3. The Ordeals

Draco looked around the clearing to which the centaurs had led them. It was a distance through the Forbidden Forest from the other, and in a deep, dim hollow where branches mostly blocked the sky and leaves covered the ground. He felt a moment's slim regret. He would have enjoyed watching the centaur dwellings in the sky and trying to guess at what had held them up.

But this clearing looked much more like the site of a test, he did have to give the centaurs that.

The tree the centaurs had bound them to was ancient, somewhere on the border between living and dead, so twisted Draco could find no comfortable position in which to rest his back against the trunk. He winced and shifted again as the knots dug into his spine, but then took a deep breath and let his head fall back. He could see the stars appearing through the gaps in the boughs, and trying to recognize constellations from the odd, scattered parts of them he could see was a soothing, if simple, game.

Nothing could soothe Potter, of course.

"Why did we agree to come?" Potter muttered, and tested the slack in the chain, what little there was, for the hundredth time. "We should at least have made them _show_ us Lydia before we gave up our wands."

"This is a trial of trust," Draco said, also for the hundredth time. "Making demands of them wouldn't have been appropriate."

Potter was chained on the other side of the tree, so he couldn't _exactly_ kick Draco's ankle, but he made a good effort. "Doesn't _anything_ ruffle you, Malfoy?"

Draco laughed in the back of his throat. Despite having spent nearly ten hours bound to the tree, unable to sit down, without food or water, he felt oddly happy. He had made a guess as to when the centaurs would free them, and he was sure it was correct. And he could _taste_ the magic in the air, piercing and cool as an arrowhead on his tongue. Just by standing in the same place as centaurs, he believed, he could glean a little of their magical technique. He would return to his tower with new, unexpected skills. His previous visits with centaurs had granted them to him as well.

But he had never been in the center of their power before, and he had never endured one of their ordeals before, though he had often offered to undergo one. He didn't lack the ability to make sacrifices, whatever Potter believed. The centaurs had watched him with imperturbable eyes each time and refused.

Draco thought he knew why now. They had been waiting for Potter to come with him. Centaurs didn't exactly have prophecies, but they obeyed the directions they saw in the heavens, and if the heavens said that he and Potter had to come into the Forbidden Forest after a kidnapped child and pass through three trials, that was what the centaurs would ensure happened.

"I let some things ruffle me," he said, when he could hear Potter whinging to himself about the lack of an answer. "You, back in school. Problems that are irresolvable with the degree of knowledge I have now. Another astronomer anticipating a project I was working on and publishing the truth before me." He took another breath. The air was growing thicker and colder, and he knew it wasn't his imagination that the ambient magic it carried had increased. "But not this. I would willingly do much more than this to learn centaur secrets."

"And whilst _you're_ after them, Lydia is probably being tortured," Potter hissed at him.

"Unlikely," Draco said cheerfully. He'd been saving this revelation, partially because his certainty on the matter had increased over several hours, but mostly just because he knew it could rattle Potter. "I think they probably escorted her back to Hogwarts the moment they had us. Centaurs aren't _stupid_, Potter. They know a kidnapping would set back their position with the wizards. On the other hand, they do what they have to do, and for some reason, it was important to them to get us into the Forest. I think they took a willing child, not a frightened one, and she went back when she wasn't of use to them as bait anymore."

Stunned silence from Potter's side of the tree. Draco grinned to himself and began counting the seconds until Potter cried out in indignation.

"Just when were you planning on telling me this?" Potter's voice was low and ugly.

"When you said something that would lead naturally into it." Draco paused, then employed his best imitation of his father's icy voice on the next words. "I do so hate introducing subjects unnaturally into conversation."

* * *

Harry's priorities had become very simple. First, he was going to figure out some way around the bloody tree, past the length of chain that separated them still. Then he was going to beat Draco Malfoy until no one could tell his nose from the other lumps on his face. 

It was a neat, simple plan, and had the virtue of direct action, something Harry had been woefully short of in the last ten hours. It would also take his mind off his dry throat and his empty stomach.

He waited a moment, until he thought Malfoy must have relaxed his guard, and then gave a mighty yank on the chain.

Malfoy yelled. Harry didn't care. The centaurs had ignored all the sounds they made so far, though they must have sentries watching through the trees just in case they'd concealed a second wand somewhere. Harry had managed to change his position, a little. He'd also changed Malfoy's position, keeping him a constant distance away from Harry, but that would get better in just a short while.

"What are you _doing_?" Malfoy spluttered. Good. Harry _liked_ spluttering.

"Working up wandless magic to shorten this chain," Harry growled. "And getting my fists ready to give you exactly what you deserve."

Malfoy went still, which was not the reaction Harry had expected. Where was the whinging, and the running full tilt around the tree in an effort to get away, and the desperate screaming for help?

Then Malfoy said, softly but urgently, "Listen, Potter. Even if you can manage enough magic to break the chain, you shouldn't do it."

"Really? From where I'm standing it's a _spectacular _idea," Harry said flatly, and then closed his eyes. He needed concentration to build up the power. Malfoy's voice in and of itself wasn't enough to distract him.

Malfoy's words _were_ enough, though. "Potter, you idiot, they've left us here so we can show we trust them. What will breaking free do? Only get you feathered with arrows before you can summon your wand, that's what."

Harry frowned into the darkness. He hadn't ever realized how _deep _the darkness would get in the Forest away from the castle lights. Or at least he didn't remember from his various exploits against Aragog and his meeting with Voldemort when he was drinking unicorns' blood. The Forest had always seemed full of light then. If his eyes were weak, though, he doubted Malfoy's were much better.

_He doesn't wear glasses. And he's an astronomer; he probably has excellent night vision._

Harry growled to himself. He hated it when he had to listen to his common sense, in defiance of his Gryffindor instincts.

"You can see the sentries, I suppose?" He knew his voice was sullen.

"No. But I know they're there."

This, Harry considered, was not a sufficient answer, especially when his muscles had begun to tremble with the effort of keeping still for so long. He had never done well bound. More than once, when he was confined during a hostage situation, his magic had simply gone wild and burned the ropes to shreds or broken the Body-Bind, leaving him free to charge at his astonished captors.

"Then," he said tightly, "distract me, Malfoy. I _hate_ this."

"Being tied to a tree in the middle of the night?" Malfoy sounded amused, damn him. "You have many other experiences to compare this one to?"

"Not what I meant." Harry breathed through his nose and did his best to calm himself down. "I _meant_, I hate being tied up, unable to move. And you say I shouldn't do the one thing I could to relieve myself. I wasn't panicking before this because I thought I had the ability to use wandless magic if it got really bad. You've taken that option away. Distract me, damn it."

Silence. Harry swore under his breath. Of course Malfoy would run out of his prickling, snapping, sniping comments _just when it really counted._

More silence. Harry, sweating now, closed his eyes and began to concentrate again in desperation. There was always the chance he could conjure a Shield Charm when the chain fell slack, and if Malfoy was right, then Lydia was out of the Forest and in no danger of any kind. He should—

"I want you to justify yourself to me, Potter."

_Oh, thank God._Harry barely kept himself from saying it aloud. He opened his eyes and sneered, wondering idly if he was sneering at a centaur sentry, given that he and Malfoy faced opposite directions. "You want reasons for why I acted the way I did during school, I reckon? Reasons that you won't understand even if I explain them to you?"

"No." Malfoy's voice had acquired the frozen, icy surface it had had when he first spoke to Harry back in his office. "I want to know why you're always running into the middle of dangerous situations, why you actively discourage other people from helping you, why you haven't already settled down with a nice young witch." There was a pause, suggestive. "Or a nice young wizard, for that matter."

Harry snorted. "I doubt you'd understand _those _reasons either, Malfoy. Since you don't know what passion means."

"I know you heard passion in my voice when we first came into the centaurs' clearing," Malfoy said, calmly, clearly. "Come, Harry. Explain yourself to me. You were determined when I knew you last. Stubborn. You kept on the trail of Voldemort, or me, for that matter, during our sixth year, until you reached the end. You should be able to put up with this, as well as a regular partner. They're gnat bites next to a Dark Lord out for your blood. When did you lose your ability to simply endure?"

Harry shifted restlessly. The problem was, people had asked him these questions before. Ron and Hermione, among others, when they'd first sensed the shift in him after the war. Ginny, with vivid tears standing in her eyes, the day Harry admitted it just didn't work and broke up with her. Some of his partners, who had genuinely liked him and had been upset when Harry pushed them away.

He knew the answers, but he didn't know how to phrase them in a way that made sense to other people.

"I don't know," he said at last. "But I _do _know that I'm much happier working alone than with someone else. Not as many lives to worry about. Not as many restrictions on my freedom." He paused a moment to think. "I love freedom more than anything else. And that answers every question."

"Does it?" Malfoy's voice was soft, but Harry didn't trust _that _for a minute. It would become a darting sword, made to pierce him, any minute. "Most people would say the bonds of good friendship, of love, aren't confinements, Harry. Or they're the kind that you enter willingly, because the sacrifice of freedom is nothing next to what you gain."

"You would know a lot about friendship and love, would you?"

Malfoy drew a sudden harsh breath. Harry felt a moment's mean satisfaction. The blow had gone home.

And then he remembered that Malfoy might be the only one who could persuade the centaurs to let them go, and he remembered his admiration of Malfoy earlier in the day as they walked through the Forest, and he shifted again. Damn it, he hated when his satisfaction turned to guilt.

"Sorry," he muttered. The word tangled up in his throat, but he managed to force it out.

Harry heard a rustle that was probably Malfoy's hair traveling against the tree as he nodded. "I think I begin to see a partial answer," he murmured, voice dry as midwinter ice. "You don't find the gain worth the sacrifice. What are your requirements for a relationship, Harry? What would someone have to give you, to make you listen to him, pay attention to him, consider his needs as important as your own?"

Wonder burned in the middle of Harry's chest. No one had ever asked this. _No_ one. They had assumed, with the best of intentions, that he was abnormal, what with his quick boredom and his low sex drive.

_Careful, Harry, _he reminded himself. _He may have uncovered your feelings awfully fast, but he's still a stuck-up poncy git._

"A _challenge_," he said. "I need someone who can wrestle with me, someone who can make me stretch to my limits, someone who requires an equal of me. I've only met people who want me to become wrapped around their little fingers or people who want to fawn on and worship me because I'm a hero. With Ron and Hermione, it's different, but even so, I couldn't have either of them for a partner. And I could hardly have you for a partner, either," he added, wondering if Draco had that in mind. "You're not an Auror."

Draco chuckled, so softly that Harry turned his head, straining his ears to hear better. "There's more than one kind of partner, Harry," he said. "And I maintain that we will have _much_ to talk about when we leave the Forest."

Harry opened his mouth to retort—so Malfoy thought he was capable of challenging Harry, did he? More, he _wanted_ to?—but there was a movement in front of him that almost made him swallow his tongue. A centaur had appeared, one whose coat glimmered dark red in the faint moonlight, and reached out to unclasp the chain that traveled across his waist and wrists.

"Right on time," Malfoy said, his voice faintly pleased. "I can see Orion through that gap in the leaves."

Harry opened his mouth to ask what the fuck _that_ meant.

"You have passed the first test," said Magus, who was apparently in on the conspiracy not to let Harry finish a complete sentence, from behind the chestnut centaur.

Harry rolled his eyes, massaged his wrists, took a deep breath, and pushed away thoughts of hunger and thirst. "You said that you had a test of courage for me?" he asked. At least, this one, he _knew_ he ought to be good at.

"Not directly for you," Magus corrected softly.

Harry _hated_ feeling out of his depth. He was happier when he just had someone to curse.

* * *

Draco felt a slight tremor. Centaurs did not twist their words, ever. They considered truth a duty of any species who lived by the dictates of the stars. But the words they spoke might not be the ones their listeners expected to hear. 

He chafed his wrists, then strode away from the tree and stood before Magus. The centaur loomed over him. Draco wondered for a moment whether he would be content to go back to Hogwarts as the Astronomy Professor when this was done; he seemed so powerful and content here. But then, centaurs didn't judge matters of precedence as wizards did, either. The one sent among humans would not have a lowly job.

"The tests of courage and moderation are for both of us?" he asked, his voice quiet enough to be respectful, but loud enough so Potter could hear. He saw Potter twitch around in his direction, head lifted and eyes glinting quick and thoughtful. Free, he seemed more in possession of that boundless energy than Draco would have expected. He wasn't shouting for his wand back, at least.

_Yet._

"Yes. Both at once." Magus inclined his head in what could have been simple acknowledgment of Draco's statement or actual approval. "Your test will be first, because you are better known to us."

_I bet that's a novel situation for Potter, _Draco thought.

Magus glanced past Draco's shoulder at Potter for a moment, then said, _"You must not interfere." _Draco didn't turn away, but he assumed Potter must have made a sign of assent, because Magus looked at him again. "It is said that you are a seeker after knowledge," he said. "When you come among our kindred, you do not simply enjoy the experience. Nor do you seek an advantage for wizards over us. You understand. You _analyze. _You work out patterns, and then you would use them in your own magic."

Draco had no idea what the right answer in this case would be. He was beyond his depth, floating in darkness as fathomless as that which lay between the well-known constellations above his head. He wondered for one frantic moment if there was a ritual greeting needed and unknown to him, if they wanted him to discourse on the uses of wizarding astronomy, if he should present a dignified and unbroken silence—

And then he remembered what he'd thought just a few minutes ago. When in doubt around centaurs, speak the truth.

"Yes," he said. "That is what I want."

"Then _take_ the knowledge, Draco Malfoy," Magus said, and his voice was like cold water flowing directly over Draco's nerves. "If you can."

His eyes, dark and just barely reflecting moonlight, widened, and in them Draco could see the stars.

But they were not the stars as he had learned to know them. They were grouped into odd, wild clumps, animals that ran only in the Forbidden Forest and named stones and trees with histories, and Draco felt a moment's irritation. That was a very simple reason why no wizards had been able to learn centaur magic, and one he should have figured out long since. Much of wizarding astronomy was built on the constellations, but the constellations were not something _intrinsic_ to the sky. At least, their shapes as drawn by wizarding eyes weren't. Different human cultures had looked at the night sky and seen very different things.

Centaurs saw them differently, as well.

The lines of silvery light used to draw the centaur constellations leaped and flickered and flashed in Draco's eyes. He despaired of remembering them, except by the silent osmosis he'd used to gain his other new skills when he came back from centaur encampments. He was falling further, delving deeper, diving faster. He was passing into the maze of Magus's eyes.

The centaurs' secrets could not be tortured from them, could not be written down and discovered by enterprising astronomers, could not be whispered by a traitor into human ears. The centaurs' secrets were_within_ them. It was no wonder, Draco thought, enthralled, that they moved to the patterns of the heavens. When those patterns guided their very muscles and veins and made up the flow of their blood, what else were they supposed to do?

Down and inwards and across he fell, while suns flew past him like rain.

* * *

Harry shivered. It was not just the increased cold of the air that made him do so, or the centaurs that had emerged from the trees and stood without a twitch of their tails or a shudder of their flanks, staring at Draco. It was the way Draco had shuddered and dropped to his knees, his face held obscenely close to Magus's still, as if chained. The tendons in his neck stood out. An eager whine emerged from his throat. 

Harry did not understand exactly what was happening, but he knew well enough that this "test" could consume Draco if he did not pull back from it.

And there was nothing he could do to interfere.

Now he knew what the centaurs had meant by a trial of courage. It took an entirely different kind of courage to stand here, biting his lips and opening and closing his eyes, and _not _lunge forwards to become the hero. He had to trust that the centaurs had good reasons for doing this and that Magus would not have offered the knowledge if Draco had no chance to recover from it. He had to trust in Draco's own strength and skill to return unharmed from the edge of mystery.

He had to trust in his own fortitude and ability not to go mad.

Questions began to dance up and down in his head as he stood there, his hands digging into his armpits and his fingers creasing the flesh above his ribs, his breath drifting up in front of his eyes, his stomach nagging him despite everything. Had he been not just reckless and disdainful of the rules in the past nine years since he'd become an Auror, but mistrustful as well? Had he had so little faith in the ability of Ron and others to handle themselves? Sure, he could work faster and better alone, but what did it say, that he wasn't willing to slow down and accommodate himself to someone else's way of working? Maybe he could have stayed partners with Ron, if he had just explained a few things and not snapped when Ron got something wrong.

Draco screamed.

Harry stirred anxiously, then remembered that putting one foot forwards, for all he knew, would violate the terms of the test. He held himself hard enough to constrict his breathing, and hoped.

* * *

There had come a point when the flight of comets, the breathing power of nebulae, the collision of galaxies, ceased to be separate phenomena to Draco. All he could understand, and more, was contained within Magus's eyes. He could have constructed floating wooden ramps of his own now, or models of the planets to live in. He could have drawn the centaur constellations from memory. He could have— 

He could have _foretold the future. _

Centaur astronomers had the power that wizards had never wielded. At least, not reliably. Draco didn't want to think about Divination and the grand claims that Seers sometimes made. For every true Seer, there were a thousand charlatans.

But centaurs could do it. They looked ahead because they could feel the stars within them, like so much else, and knew what influences the stars were and were not capable of laying down, based on their present positions. It was like knowing the ability of one's body to step or stride. Instinctive knowledge, hard to describe, even harder to possess.

And then Draco met the limit, and knew, in body, that he screamed.

It was a scream of understanding, not pain. To have this knowledge, to know what Mars_meant_ and exactly how the birth of a star would foretell the birth of a child—

One had to surrender to it. Completely. It was not a matter of using it. It was a matter of dwelling within it and allowing _it_ to use _you._

Thus the centaurs' odd contrivance to fulfill a prophecy that had little personally to do with them and could have backfired on them by making wizards more frightened and suspicious of their kind. That was the price they paid. To know fate, to _be _fate, was to surrender the free will that allowed humans to make other decisions and oppose themselves to destiny.

And as much as he loved knowledge, Draco loved his freedom more.

_He_ had made his decisions after the war. _He_ had found a profession that intrigued him and would still allow him to act within the strict restrictions that the Ministry had laid down on his use of his wand._He_ had built his tower and argued with his parents and moved out of Malfoy Manor.

_He_ had stood up to the Dark Lord, in the end—not to the monster himself, but to the shadow the monster had left lying over his life. He would not give up what he had won, not if he could know everything Magus did.

Rising like a raven, Draco flung himself back from the edge of the abyss. He did not know how much his mind would retain, and he did not try to find out. He ran shamelessly back down the long, sun-dotted trail, and emerged gasping into darkness that was like light beside the endless reaches of spaces in Magus's eyes. He dropped his head into his hands and knelt, breathing harshly.

The knowledge fell like stardust through his mental fingers. Draco did not try to tighten his grip. He knew he would give in to temptation and stare upwards again if he did. Those eyes were still waiting for him.

_A test of moderation for me, indeed, _he thought, and wiped a hand across his mouth. He turned to find that Potter had not moved from the place where he'd been when Draco began his strange journey, though his eyes were enormous and he twitched like a startled rabbit when he realized Draco was staring at him with sanity intact. His eyes closed then, and he took an immense, silent breath.

Draco's resolve to talk to Potter when this all ended solidified. He scrambled to his feet and moved back from Magus, to sling an arm around Potter's shoulders. Potter leaned against him with a smaller sigh than the one he'd just given. Draco took a moment to revel in that closeness—the closeness of an inadequate, flawed human being who made mistakes, and who would never know the future.

"It is the time of the third test," said Magus, and the darkness of the clearing tore.

* * *

Harry opened his eyes. 

On the ground in front of the centaurs, widening gradually but inexorably as they moved back, a pool of light was opening. It turned and swirled slowly, a viscous maelstrom. Harry had never seen anything like it. The pool was pure gold in color, and leaping flares broke the surface of it, as Hermione had told him fire did on the surface of the sun. How far down it went, he didn't know. How wide it might spread in the end, he didn't know.

What would happen if he stepped into it, he didn't know.

The urge to do so hooked into his stomach like a wire. He had already stumbled forwards several steps before he realized he didn't know what to do. He halted, gaze darting over to Magus, who nodded imperceptibly.

"You must step into it," he said. "And remain there as long as you think you need to. It is different beneath the surface." There was a grave undertone to those last words, where Harry thought a human might have smirked.

Harry had no objections. He had no wand, and the magic of the pool was utterly unknown. This was the greatest threat, the greatest challenge, he had ever faced in his life.

"Draco Malfoy may not interfere," Magus said, but the words sounded thin and unimportant to Harry. Why in the world would Malfoy _want_ to interfere? Lydia was safe, and he had, probably, at least some of the knowledge he had come for. This was Harry's fate, no one else's. If he died now, at least his friends would know he had died doing something he loved.

And he left behind no lover who would be hurt.

He waded forwards and plunged into the pool.

Heat washed around him for a moment, heat that made him scream in ecstasy at the pain. He had stepped into the sun, he was standing in a wash of dragonfire, a hundred tons of melting iron were falling on him all at once—

And then he vanished into darkness and stillness.

* * *

Draco closed his eyes. 

_Potter, you idiot._

He understood _exactly_ what this pool represented, even though he had never seen it before, nor found mention of it among the few scraps of knowledge he had coaxed out of centaurs. It represented Potter's greatest temptation, as the endless understanding in Magus's eyes had been Draco's.

And Draco knew what that would be, given what Potter had told him when they were both chained to the tree.

What would lure the man who lived to charge into impossible situations and conquer them with a mixture of fighting skill and blind luck?

The unconquerable.

* * *

Harry found himself drifting in _perfect_ darkness. No night could compare to it. In every direction around him was stillness, a lack of sight, a lack of sound. He tried to shout, and his voice did not even rise before it died. His skin touched nothing. He might have been falling, or standing, or drifting sideways. There was no way to be sure. He was rapidly losing track of the sensations of his own body. 

Insanity pressed close to the verges of his brain. Harry laughed wildly, knowing that his heart beat faster even if he couldn't feel it. He had never faced madness so directly before, and he was looking forwards to it.

He had only a moment of that, however, before shafts of misty starlight pierced the pool, beaming down from above. At the same moment, colored sparks began to whirl and drift in the distance. Harry knew what they were, even before they came close enough that he could distinguish individual features. They were his beloved dead, his parents and Remus and Sirius, the four figures he had walked with in the Forbidden Forest when he believed that he went to his death on Voldemort's wand.

He had come to the country where they waited for him, and this time there was no reason to hold back. He could swim over to join them if he wished. Harry understood what he had in that moment: choice unbounded. No one was waiting for him to sacrifice his life and save the world. He was a good Auror, but others could work on and solve even the most difficult cases. Ron and Hermione would mourn, but he would never know of it. His aloofness from other human ties in the past decade was proven spectacularly wise now. He had always held lightly to life. He could let _go._

No one to stop him. He was the one who would make this decision, if it were made at all.

Harry imagined his life as a golden ball held in his hands. He tossed it into the air, caught it again, rolled it from palm to palm, and nearly dropped it into the inky blackness beneath him. But he snatched it back up at the last instant. No, if he died, he was going to die by _choice_, not accident.

This was the freedom beyond all freedoms. This was the challenge beyond all challenges, the patient fate he could no more escape than could anyone else. He had looked into the face of death many times before, spit, and walked away, but someday he knew he would not be able to walk away. And now it waited for him, ready to engage him in the riskiest of contests, the one he _knew_ he could not win.

It was seduction like nothing he had ever known.

And it was clarity, it was awakening. Just as he had been forced to wonder if he were mistrusting everyone who tried to partner with him instead of pushing past them to claim his rightful place, Harry had to think, now, of what he'd been chasing. Freedom, as he'd told Draco? Independence, which he had a right to after so much of his life had been controlled and manipulated and shaped by others' expectations? Excitement, so he wouldn't get bored?

No.

Death.

Harry gave a little shiver, and shook his head. Then he looked down at the quivering ball of intensely concentrated golden life and warmth between his hands. Such a small thing, and so easily quenched by the well of blackness around him. The dead outnumbered the living, and in the deeps of time, everything would end. Someday, he would face his last battle.

But he need not make a contribution to that ending before that fight.

He tossed the ball upwards, and willed it to rise. Then Harry rose, chasing his life like a Snitch back into the imperfect darkness of the Forbidden Forest.

* * *

Draco felt as if he'd never known what it was like to breathe by the time Harry finally tore through the golden surface of the pool. 

He had suffered enough in those endless, unclocked minutes to know that this was his own test of courage. He had to face the temptation to summon his wand and cast a spell that might dissipate the pool and fetch Harry back, or at least force the centaurs to do so. He had to face the biting, blinding fear about what would happen if the pool simply settled and stayed the same, unbroken by anything but its own flares, until sunrise and beyond.

He had to face the fact that he really, really didn't want Harry to die.

He fell to his knees as he watched the other wizard wade out of the pool, scrubbing at his own red and irritated flesh. Harry stood over him a moment later, gazing down. Draco stared up, and through the flickering shadows the golden pool cast, he made out gentleness on that face—the first time he'd ever seen his former schoolboy rival wear that expression.

Then Harry extended his hand.

Draco clenched his fingers around Harry's wrist, and let Harry pull him out of fear and a million memories.

* * *

Harry had listened just enough to Magus to record what the centaur was talking about on the "Auror part" of his brain. The Auror part would always have a clear recollection of the important facts later. Their wands had been returned. Lydia Siddons really had changed, more than her parents thought she had, beginning with her need to get over her fear of her Astronomy teacher. She had willingly come to the Forest with Magus, when he told her it was part of something important to have her along. She was already back in Hogwarts, or probably in the loving arms of her parents by now. Harry and Draco had done their part by coming after her and fulfilling the prophecy. Magus would return to his post as Astronomy teacher, empowered in a new way to deal with humans, now that he had shown his people wizards could learn the lessons of courage and moderation and wouldn't necessarily tear the Forbidden Forest apart immediately because they believed one of their children was in danger. 

Harry knew all that. He'd be able to reproduce it for Beauchamp later, via Pensieve if he had to.

Right now, though, his attention was much more firmly fixed on Draco's hair and scent and the solid warmth of his body as he leaned against Harry in the circle of his arm.

They didn't wait for the trip back to his office, or even a quick Apparition to Draco's tower, which he suggested between his gasps for breath; Harry had dragged him through the Forest at a rapid pace. Harry leaned Draco back against a tree on the outskirts of the Forest, in shadows that hid them from Hogwarts, and fastened his mouth on the other man's.

And, for the first time, he was _involved_ in what was happening.

Draco was a living challenge under his hands, his tongue dueling and darting back against Harry's, his skin hot as the pool had been, his hands fumbling frantically for a way beneath Harry's clothes. He let out a triumphant snarl when he found it, and then tossed his head back with a hoarse little breath when Harry located his cock first. Harry_ squeezed_, and saw, by the light of stars and moon, Draco Malfoy the Unruffled Astronomer writhing with his eyes shut and his mouth slack and open, his throat strained back as it had been when he knelt before Magus.

Need that he had only ever associated with fighting and rescuing took hold of Harry. He had the need to make Draco look like that again, and again, and again.

Sex had never been like this. Nothing had ever been like this.

He would have fallen to his knees and tried something he'd only ever been mildly interested in before, but Draco pushed back against him then, and muttered a charm that loosened Harry's robes enough for him to find his target. And Harry had the satisfaction of feeling a pair of hands that obviously weren't only talented at wielding telescopes and star charts curve around him.

He didn't throw his head back, because that wasn't what he did. He ground his mouth into Draco's, and his erection into Draco's hands, and Draco into the tree. Their panting breaths traveled back and forth between them. Harry found himself caught in a spiral of emotions and sensations that twined around each other and only grew sharper and quicker and more insistent the more he felt them, luring him into feeling more and more of them.

And he wanted to make Draco feel them, too, and every sign that he was only made him want to do it _more._

There was never enough of this in the world, he thought, as Draco made the tree sway with the force of his sudden buck, as he cried out in something like pain, as he came with force enough to nearly tear Harry's hands from his cock. Never, there would never be enough, not enough touching or enough of that sound or enough skin to lean forwards and cover with kisses and swipes of his tongue—

And there would never be enough of the force that lifted him like a tsunami and dropped him abruptly into pleasure. Harry keened, and shook himself apart, and at the last slumped with his head on Draco's shoulder, his breaths slowing, subsiding gently into silence.

* * *

Draco would have lifted a hand to stroke Harry's hair, but they were rather occupied with holding the cooling, sticky mess between their bodies right now. He rolled his head to the side instead, brushing Harry's cheek with his. He received a fever-bright look from green eyes, and then another kiss, so greedy that he wondered if Harry wouldn't be ready for a second round quite soon. 

"You should know," he whispered, "that I _won't_ tolerate you going madly into danger again, not if we're going to be lovers."

Harry smiled, the deep, self-satisfied smile of a man who had faced an important flaw in his character and not let it break him. "Don't worry," he said. "I rather think you're challenge enough for me."

Draco smiled back, hesitantly. He could hear the voices of doubt beginning in his head. Harry was—well, he was Harry. He was an Auror, working in the midst of a Ministry that still sneered doubtfully at Draco's family. Harry seemed never to have had a lover who would stay with him; Draco had never had one who wanted to put up with his moods for long. And there was all the history between them, lying largely untouched save for the insults they'd flung earlier that day.

But.

After what they'd faced in the Forest, Draco thought they would be dishonoring themselves if they didn't at least _try._

He moved at last, a little uncomfortable with his enforced stillness, and Harry used his wand to banish the mess from between them. They still didn't go immediately back to the Ministry, however. Draco lifted his arms and wrapped them around Harry, drawing him close, so that he could both embrace him and see the stars over his shoulder.

_We can try. Because no one human knows the future._


End file.
